


On a Stony Pathway in Another World

by er0sis



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Rewrite, Endgame Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff, Happy Ending, Major Character Undeath, POV Clarke Griffin, Void Bellamy Blake, because i think they would be great together, echo x finn in the afterlife perhaps, fuck it i'll do it myself, i dont even watch this dumb ass show anymore, im here to do what jason is too much of a coward to do, this is purely out of spite
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:01:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25031362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/er0sis/pseuds/er0sis
Summary: Clarke learns that Bellamy is dead. Maybe she isn't as unbreakable as everyone thinks.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake & Clarke Griffin, Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin, Bellarke - Relationship
Comments: 1
Kudos: 54





	On a Stony Pathway in Another World

**Author's Note:**

> hi, so i literally get all my t100 info from twitter because i lost interest in the show after s5, which means if i'm missing something or just straight up get something wrong in terms of anomaly lore or the s7 storyline, pls ignore it. i will not fix it because i hate this show. i hope this in some way satisfies my fellow bellarkes who have been baited by jason for years and is now sidelining his main characters for echo. i love u guys and u deserve better <3

Clarke isn’t sure when exactly it clicks. 

She thinks it starts with her mother’s voice in her head. _Her friends are her weakness,_ Abby says. _Start with Bellamy Blake._ And Clarke is bleeding from two scalpel incisions on her chest, carved by her mother’s hand, but his name hurts more—the thought of him being used against her. _Because_ of her. Lexa’s voice comes next. _Yet you worry about him more,_ she says, a response to Clarke’s denial. _Love is weakness._ Clarke tries to learn it for the next six years, tries to think of her people instead, to make the choices she always has to make. Sometimes it works. Not with Bellamy. And Lexa is dead on her blood-soaked furs, residue still spilling from her neck. The chip. That damned chip. She wonders for a moment—and she doesn’t understand why all of this is coming to her now—how Madi is doing in Sanctum. And then Clarke is on the Eligius ship and the cold glint of gunmetal presses at her temple, tears in her eyes as she seeks the face of that little girl in the valley. But that girl is gone. A century ago, Clarke tells Bellamy on a stony pathway in another world, _I can’t lose you too._ Finn gives her his heart and she’s washing it clean from her hands the next morning. She passes the torch that burns his body to ash and lets him go. And then, a lifetime later, the words are fresh on her tongue: _I won’t lose anyone else._

Bellamy is dead. 

Clarke breaks.

There’s a machine hum buzzing in her ear and it almost sounds like the Ark. She searches for his voice to fill up the deafening noise of his absence. _I’m gonna need a better reason_ , Bellamy says, and suddenly Clarke can think of a million answers better than what she came up with a hundred years ago. She remembers all of the things she wanted to say. _I can’t lose you, but it’s more than that. It’s different_ — _w_ _e’re different. I need you, but I_ want _you more. There might be a day when all of this is over, when I can survive without you, but I don’t want it. I want to spend eons with you, Bellamy Blake._

But wanting is a dangerous thing.

 _If I don’t see you again…_

Clarke shuns the memory. The what-if. That one haunts her most. 

“Clarke…” This voice isn’t in her head. Raven has a tentative hand on her shoulder, her face knotted in concern. 

Clarke wants to say something sensible, something expected of the girl who never breaks. Of Wanheda. Of a leader. Of Madi’s mother. But this is Bellamy, and she was only ever Clarke Griffin to him.

_Was_.

The word stings in more ways than one. That she hasn’t been ‘ _just_ _Clarke’_ in a long time—not to her people, not to herself, and lately, maybe not to him. That he’s gone and it should only be devastating but instead it feels impossible. It feels like a broken promise, unspoken but known to the two of them, shared between stolen glances and brushing fingers. Clarke and Bellamy. Whatever they were, it was supposed to be forever. 

Clarke can handle being partners, the not knowing, the thin line in between friendship and something more. She can handle radioing him for 2,199 days, waiting and wanting and expecting him to come home to her the same as he was when he left. Clarke can handle being wrong and foolish and so, _so_ naive for thinking they could ever be the way they were before Praimfaya. She can even handle watching as he learns to run to arms that aren’t hers. As they become a dated model of themselves: not quite so attached, not quite a perfect fit, a couple screws loose here and there. Because they still work. Bellamy forgives her. Bellamy smiles at her like they’re just two kids sharing drinks on their first Unity Day on Earth. Bellamy makes her feel at home. Bellamy reminds her that she’s still Clarke Griffin, a girl and not a legend.

Raven rubs her thumb over Clarke’s arm in comfort, and it’s unlike Clarke to feel the urge to slap it away, but she wants to. If she wasn’t so drained, so defeated with the knowledge that Bellamy is gone, she thinks she might have. It bothers her to think of his hand on her shoulder instead, and getting angry would be so much easier. Instead she sinks into her touch, and then she’s definitely crying, and it aches. It swallows her whole. Clarke feels Bellamy’s loss like a missing limb. A missing heart. It doesn’t take long for the pain to carve a hole in her chest where he had been. 

She isn’t sure how long she’s there for, and she starts to tune into reality hazily, spotty little moments of lucidity in the midst of her grief. Gabriel is staring down at her, an unidentifiable expression in his eyes. She nearly mistakes it for common sympathy, but then she realizes it’s because he’s looking in a mirror of sorts. How many times did Gabriel lose Josephine before it stopped feeling like a dagger in an open wound? Clarke would give anything for that sort of loss. A temporary feeling before he was inevitably returned to her again. But Bellamy wasn’t a false god with a new body waiting for him on the other side. Bellamy was… he was…

“What happened?” Clarke finally manages, a weak sputter of words that she barely recognizes as her own voice. She needs to know.

Gabriel looks wary. “There was an explosion. Look, Clarke, I can exp—”

An _explosion?_ Clarke tries to stand, weak in the knees. It feels like all of the weight building on her since her mother’s death has let loose. She’s suffocating in it. 

But an explosion doesn’t sound right—not for Bellamy. She knows the thought is ridiculous. Clarke has imagined Bellamy dying one too many times, in nightmares and fleeting thoughts, but the way she pictured it was peaceful, in one of the old cottages in Shallow Valley, when they were both wrinkled and gray and too old to work the way they used to. Not that it mattered, they would finally have peace. Maybe even have that drink. And Clarke had thought about Bellamy dying in battle, in one of the many wars waged on Earth and in Sanctum, dying with a sword in his side, laying in her arms. It was awful. It was enough to ruin her. But she was always there—whatever way Bellamy was going to go, Clarke was supposed to be there. And though she hoped it would have been her first, if the world was going to rip him away from her one last time, she was going to say goodbye.

“What do you mean?” She says, and it feels like it should be rage, but it comes out in a broken sob. 

“Octavia saw it happen,” Gabriel tells her. “Bellamy had a man hostage, and someone set off a grenade. Clarke… it vaporized everything. Bellamy was closest. If you’re looking for a way he might have survived, I’m sorry... there isn’t.”

_No_ , Clarke thinks, _not fair._ It's beyond unfair. There needs to be something left; something she can trace and feel some outline of him. Something to prove he was ever here in the first place. 

Raven holds her up straighter, hand at her back.

“Bring us somewhere safe. And quiet.” She says, and Clarke knows it isn’t a suggestion.

Clarke turns to her in protest, foggy thoughts of Bellamy clouding with what she knows she needs to do. The war. The shepherd. Her people. “No,” Clarke says, but she sounds like a fraction of herself. “Raven, I have to—”

“No, Clarke.” She stops her, and Clarke can see their conversation on Nakara gleaming in her eyes. Raven leans in closer, voice drifting to a pained whisper. “I told you that Clarke Griffin doesn’t break. But right now, that’s the only thing you need.”

“I—”

“You can’t be the hero if you’re falling apart. You have to feel it.”

Clarke hates that Raven can see it. Hates that everyone in this room can see it. Most of all she hates that it’s true. She _is_ falling apart. She can feel the moisture on her face, the slump in her clothes, the heaviness in her legs, and she’s sure they all notice it too.

“Please.” Raven says. 

Clarke doesn’t protest, and that seems to be enough.

"You heard me, didn't you?" Raven narrows her eyes at Gabriel, who glances at his companions.

"We should talk." He says.

Miller steps in, steeled. Clarke is surprised to see tears in his eyes. "We can talk later."

Gabriel and the others lead them down a hallway—cold, blinding, joyless—into a room with a metal latch and a complex entry code. The people accompanying them seem eager. Clarke doesn’t have it in her to acknowledge that she feels like she’s being handled like a caged animal or that she has no idea where exactly she is. She doesn’t trust Bardo, and with the way he’s acting, she doesn’t think she trusts Gabriel either. Every rational part of her is screaming to wake up. But she remembers that Bellamy was here once, a day or five years ago, that he stepped through these hallways too. She imagines him getting caught in an explosion so deadly there’s nothing left for her to hold, and it feels like she’s folding in on herself again. She doesn't seem to notice as Raven gets lost in a scuffle of guards, as her friends are outnumbered by them in the most delicate way. They stand beside them, slivers of smiles on their faces, unthreatening, soft. One of them opens the door.

"We're glad you finally made it, Clarke." He says.

And then she's shoved into the room and the door shuts, locks, and clangs behind her. It's dark. It smells like copper, like the metal scent of blood. She hears screaming, fists pounding, and for the first time in a long time, Clarke Griffin doesn’t fight as the tears come.

**Author's Note:**

> btw i wrote this in like 20 mins at 2am so please forgive me for it being bad


End file.
